From the desk of Mr Grievous Angel:Remember that huge mix of dancehall-infused grime and grimey dancehall me and John Eden did a few years ago for the Blogariddims Podcast?

Well, I’ve done a new master of it so it sounds louder, clearer and better than ever before. Maximum listening pleasure as well as a unique insight into the bashment, dancehall and one drop roots of grime.

Hope you enjoy this and please tell your friends, fans and followers about it if you do.

To which I would reiterate that I was a total late comer to Grime. I heard it around the place but it never clicked until I saw Flowdan and Killa P perform alongside Kevin Martin at BASH at Plastic People. Then I dived in.

By the time we did this mix in 2008 a lot of the people who had latched onto Grime early had decided it was desperately uncool. Which suited me fine. It meant I could easily investigate the early days and then develop my own opinions about what was good amongst the new stuff without jostling elbows with the hipsterati.

This mix was a case of forcing a connection between dancehall and Grime really, to make a point. Of course, I didn’t need to do too much forcing – it was more a case of just joining up the dots in a slightly different way and then colouring everything in red, gold and green. As with Woofah, the idea was to get open minded reggae heads into grime and vice versa.

The mix was a load of fun to do and went down really really well. It certainly still gets regular rotation here.

I have virtually zero idea about what is happening with Grime these days, though. Perhaps that’s a good thing – my daughter can’t decide whether my appreciation of Tinchy Stryder is cool or embarrassing.

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Apparently some of you ignored my advice earlier this year to get to the Showtime event. It was one of those legendary evenings that I can now taunt you about for the rest of your lives. But all is not lost – you can now shock out to its ridiculous line up in the privacy of your own home.

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I wrote quite a lot about UK policing earlier in the year in relation to the failure of policing (at best) that lead to the death of Smiley Culture. News about that case was always going to ebb and flow, not least because it is now in the bureaucratic hands of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

But… it was never just about Smiley Culture. Since Smiley’s death a number of other people have died in suspicious circumstances in police custody. Many questions are being asked about heavy handed policing at demonstrations against the austerity measures being introduced by the UK government to pay for the banking crisis. In recent weeks London’s Metropolitan Police have been implicated in the “Hackgate” News International scandal.

Jody McIntyre’s series of films touches on some of the issues, asking the right questions and making the right links. The first episode is above and includes involvement from Benjamin Zephaniah, Merlin Emanuel (both of who have lost family members in police custody) and victims of police crime. The soundtrack includes contributions from grime artists Ghetts, Logic, Mic Righteous and DVS. A future episode will deal with the coalition government’s budget cuts.

The terrible truth is that hard times can bring people together. Four years ago it would have been inconceivable that student protestors and grime artists would find common ground.

More seriously, Mark Duggan was fatally shot by the police in Tottenham last night, about a mile away from where I am typing this. Unusually, the IPCC were on the scene within hours – perhaps as a result of the scrutiny they have found themselves under this year?

The film’s chronology ends with the beginning of Grime, and I was left fair gasping for a sequel that did this era justice.

Now The Wire’s Derek Walmsley has stepped up to the plate with an excellent Resonance FM show featuring Michael and Rollo from the film – and their cassettes, vinyl and minidiscs from the dawn of Grime. It’s as good an intro as any to the early days the genre – done by proper hyped up enthusiasts interspersed with proper hyped up music.

If you have even a passing interest in this sort of thing, then you need to check this.

My article for Datacide issue 11 is now online. I wrote it a couple of years back in preparation for the talk I did at the launch event for the previous issue.

But actually it has stood the test of time quite well, anticipating some of the recent debates about multiculturalism. It was quite gratifying to see Professor Anthony Glees spouting yet more nonsense on Channel 4’s “Ten O’Clock Live Show” last month.

Obviously I’d be interested in any comments or criticisms people have of the piece.

Following the lazy misrecognition of the ‘bunking’ EMA protesters from various quarters of media and government, Dan Hancox sets out to explore the complicated and contradictory soundscape of these urban motley crews:

Well, looks like grime is still full of surprises! Most of the CDs I’ve checked recently have been too much on the vocoder/funky tip, but there’s still a ton of interesting things happening under the surface.